Day 157: 29 April – Humanity is Refreshing

It has been way too long since I last wrote and I am terribly sorry for that! No excuses!

Much of my time is spent trying to convince people to act on injustices they see around them instead of merely accepting those injustices as reality. Sometimes when I am speaking with people I can tell they want to “right the wrongs” but just don’t know how; others go through the motions of nodding their heads, but I can see on their faces that they are fortunate enough to be unaffected by the injustice, and will happily continue to allow it to cause misery for others, as long as it does not begin to impose on their way of life. One of my biggest “battles” of this nature has been with the pedophiles that prey on the children living on the streets of Cape Town.

I do think the average citizen feels disgust and disdain about these happenings, but I have rarely seen that emotion turn into public action. I personally have worked with all different forms of police units and “protectors of the public” to see justice be served, but due to the complexity of the situation, formerly weak policy (now changed and still evolving), the fact that “they are only street kids” (in the words of National Intelligence years ago), and other complications, children on the streets of Cape Town are the most vulnerable and easily accessible group of sexual prey for pedophiles.

This morning however, I was refreshed by humanity. I checked my Facebook and I had a message from a person that I am not “friends” with, and have never met before, neither on Facebook or in real life. She said she had seen me on one of the Special Assignment episodes done about pedophilia amongst street children and she wrote hoping I was the “right guy”. She then told me about an event that happened Monday night on Long Street.

She was driving around the corner of a dark, back street, just off Long, when she saw an old white man calling two children to get into his car. The way the man was behaving let her know that he was a pedophile. She told me that she immediately drove towards him and blocked him in. She wrote down his number plate, the make and model of his car, and she said she would have done more but she had her friend’s child in the backseat of her own car and did not want to put him at risk. She contacted me and is going to take matters further, whatever that looks like.

I am thankful for people like this lady who are willing to act when they see injustice! I am so thankful she made contact with me, to take matters forward, but also reaffirming something in me that I already knew but sometimes forget: basic acts of humanity can be so refreshing! What a way to start the day!

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